One of the greatest feats of World War Two was how the Soviet Union managed to escape accountability for their actions in helping Hitler take half of Europe. (Not to mention the fact that at the end fo the War they did take half of Europe!)
One of the greatest feats during the breakup of the Soviet Union is how the Russian Government never had to face up to their country's complicity in Helping Hitler and managed to keep the truth from the Russian people.
Now, as information becomes more free and as Russia's neighbors push back with inconvenient facts, Russia is planning to outlaw questioning The Soviet Union's victory over the Nazis in WWII:
And in the lead-up to the country's annual Victory Day celebrations, the Kremlin has made a move that it touts as yet another display of Russia's patriotism and pride: the government has announced that it is considering passing a law to criminalize statements and acts that deny the Soviets won World War II, or claim it used poor tactics in battle or did not liberate Eastern Europe. - Time
Valery Ryazansky, a United Russia Duma MP and a chief supporter of the bill, said on Thursday he hoped the law would appear before the Duma before June 22 — Russia's Day of Remembrance and Mourning. "Those who attempt to interpret the outcome of World War II, to turn everything upside down, to represent those who liberated countries from the Nazi invaders as subjugators" will be punished, he said.Violators of the new addition to the criminal code would face a fine of up to around $9,200 or up to three years in prison. If the perpetrator is a government official and uses his status to break the law, the fine is increased to more than $15,300, a five-year term in prison and the deprivation of the right to occupy certain government positions, said Ryazansky. - Time
Yes, it might get pretty damn uncomfortable if the Russian Government would have to explain the following: (This is by no means a complete list of collusion between the Soviets and Nazis)
During the critical 1932 German elections, he forbid the German Communists from collaborating with the Social Democrats. These parties together gained more votes than Hitler and could have prevented him from becoming Chancellor. - Wikipedia
Stalin purged his diplomatic apparatus of Jews in preparation for signing his “non-aggression” pact with Hitler. - National Review
The Soviet Union had Hitler's back at the start of World War II by agreeing to split Europe amongst themselves drawing a line right through Poland. (Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact) It is common knowledge that Nazi Germany attacked Poland (on 1 September 1939) but not so common knowledge that the Soviet Union attacked Poland from the East. (On 17 September 1939)
From the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in August, 1939 through almost the end of the first half of 1941, Stalin and the USSR fed and equipped Hitler and Germany as Germany invaded Western Europe and then attacked Great Britain by air. - Wikipedia
According to the Historian Richard Pipes, the Communist states share some responsibility for World War II. Both Hitler and Mussolini used the Soviet Union as a model for their own totalitarian states and Hitler privately expressed that Stalin was a "genius". In turn, Stalin expressed desire for another great war that would leave his enemies weakened and allow Soviet expansion. He allowed the testing and production of German weapons that were forbidden by the Versailles Treaty to occur on Soviet territory. - Wikipedia
Soviet-Finnish Winter War
The Soviet Union attacked Finland to take land that the Finns declined to cede to the Soviets voluntarily.
Soviet Union escorted a Nazi raider disguised as neutral merchant ships to the Pacific so that they could avoid attack by the British:
Breakout into the Pacific - Under the command of Kapitän zur See (later Konteradmiral) Robert Eyssen, HSK7 (German auxiliary cruiser KOMET) departed for her first raiding voyage from Gotenhafen on 3 July 1940. With the consent of the then neutral Soviet Union and with assistance from Soviet Icebreaker Joseph Stalin, KOMET, disguised as the Soviet steamer Dezhnev, passed through the Arctic Ocean north of Russia and entered the Pacific Ocean. - Wiki
Murmansk Shipyards converted a German ship into an Auxiliary Cruiser
The German motor vessel ILLER was converted into an auxiliary cruiser in the Murmansk shipyards - The Deadly Embrace
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Murmansk was used by the Nazis as a safe haven for their ships at the outbreak of WWII including the:- German Liner BREMEN
- German Liner ST. LOUIS
- US cargo ship CITY OF FLINT which was taken by the German Battleship DEUTSCHLAND as a prize. The ship and German crew should have been interned by the Soviets but were not.
Soviets provided a Navy base for Nazi Use:
The Soviets also provided Germany with a U-boat base at Basis Nord (Russia) for refueling, maintenance location and a takeoff point for raids and attacks on shipping. In addition, the Soviets provided Germany with access to the Northern Sea Route for both cargo ships and raiders (though only the raider Komet used the route before June of 1941), which forced Britain to protect sea lanes in both the Atlantic and the Pacific. - Wikipedia
Circumvented Sanctions against Nazi Germany:
The Soviet Union also bought and shipped other materials to Germany, such as rubber from India. - Wikipedia
Oddly enough, the Soviet Union's assistance to Nazi Germany provided Germany with the raw materials needed to attack the Soviet Union:
Despite fears causing the Soviet Union to enter deals with Germany in 1939, that Germany came so close to destroying the Soviet Union was due, in large part, to Soviet actions taken from 1939 to 1941. Without Soviet imports, German stocks would have run out in several key products by October of 1941, only three and a half months into the invasion. Germany would have already run through their stocks of rubber and grain before the first day of the invasion were it not for Soviet imports.Without Soviet deliveries of these four major items ( Oil Products, Rubber, Manganese, Grain ), Germany could barely have attacked the Soviet Union, let alone come close to victory, even with more intense rationing. - Wikipedia
In October and November 1940, German–Soviet Axis talks occurred concerning the Soviet Union's potential entry as a fourth Axis Power. The negotiations included a two day Berlin conference between Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov, Adolf Hitler and German Foreign Minister Joachim Ribbentrop, followed by both countries trading written proposed agreements. Germany never responded to a November 25, 1940, Soviet proposal leaving the negotiations unresolved. Germany broke the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in June 1941 by invading the Soviet Union. - Wikipedia
As for being allied against Hitler for the second-half of WWII, they were not exactly the best allie for the US either:
How Russians copied captured B-29By 1946, Tupolev had produced the Tu-4, a fully working version of the B-29, plugging a gap in Stalin's arsenal. Mr Hardesty said: "The British and the Americans were flabbergasted when Stalin rolled this out at an air show in the West in 1947 and they hurried to find out how it had been produced."MI6 and the American CIA obtained information about the three missing B-29s, but full details of how the Russians had copied the Superfortress were not known until Mr Hardesty published an article on the subject this week after being shown top secret Kremlin documents by Russian historians.The dismantled B-29 and two others made emergency landings near Vladivostok after attacking Japanese targets in Manchuria exactly 12 months before another B-29, the Enola Gay, dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Unable or unwilling to fly back to their bases on the Chinese mainland, the crews chose to land in the Soviet Union, reasoning that Stalin was an ally."This was a bad choice, because they were imprisoned for up to 12 months near Tashkent." The pillaging of the B-29s had immense significance after the war when, with the help of atom spies such as Klaus Fuchs, the Russians stole enough British and American nuclear secrets to build their own atomic bomb."Having the Tu-4 meant he had some way of delivering it to America. Suddenly he had a strategic bombing force and was going to be able to stand up to America in the Cold War." - Telegraph, UK
The only reason Russia is getting away with white-washing over it's criminal behavior during WWII is because the other countries of the world have declined to press them about it. And yet Bush is still one of the greatest monsters of all times, all the while Putin plays old Soviet games such as turning off the pipelines to Western europe and chipping away bits off Georgia.
It is not fair to simply declare this ancient history either. Look at the international incident Russia forced when Estonia decided to move a Soviet statue from the center of their capital. The Russians claimed that the Soviet Union 'liberated' Estonia from the Nazis. Yes, it is true that the Nazis had control of Estonia when the Red Army arrived. What the Russians refuse to say is that the Nazis took Estonia from the Soviets who had invaded first.
Modern Russia will not alter it's aggressive ways until there is a full accounting of Soviet crimes.
Link:
"Falsifiers of History" Targeted by the Kremlin - Jamestown Foundation
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